Cristoforetti said "Terry has something to say about that," and then handed him the microphone.

"If you had to live with me and Butch, yes, it's very scary in space," Virts said. "Every morning she has to look at us."

The astronauts were on a short break, giving an interview to the Houston Chronicle on Wednesday, NASA's Day of Remembrance. Most of their time is spent on checklists, tasks and experiments. Right now they are preparing for three grueling spacewalks next month.

But the work not withstanding, the Italian and two Americans appear to be having a delightful time.

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Wilmore has been on the station four months, and the other two joined him in November. Each will stay about six months in space. They share the station with three Russian colleagues.

After four months, most astronauts who visit the station say they are just about ready to come home.

But Wilmore, who has a wife and two young daughters back home, said he hasn't hit the wall yet.

"I will answer that truthfully," he said. "I am not ready to come home. I would love to pipe my family up here and share some time with them. But I don't have the four-month doldrums at all. I'm enjoying myself. We've tried to make it fun."

The crew, especially the Americans, are also looking forward to the Super Bowl on Sunday.

Last week, Virts tweeted a picture of himself in the space station's cupola wearing a J.J. Watt shirt.

"Not only in Houston, I think most people can agree that J.J. Watt is the greatest football player, not only on Earth, but probably in the whole universe," Virts replied.

Wilmore was a team leader in tackles as a linebacker at Tennessee Tech University. He's a big football fan who says he will get up early, on the station's sleep schedule, to not miss the second half of the Super Bowl. Is Wilmore, then, the best footballer on the station?

"I think that's probably safe to say," Virts said.

During the answer, Cristoforetti said something inaudible, and the crew laughed. Then Virts added a clarification.

"Samantha is the greatest European football player, as we call soccer, on the station," he concluded.

In February, Wilmore and Virts will make three spacewalks to perform tasks like connecting heating, power and data cables, to prepare the station for a new docking adaptor that will be brought up this year. This adaptor will allow SpaceX's Dragon and Boeing's CST-100 to dock to the station as early as 2017.

There's also ongoing work with scientific experiments and three hours of daily exercise to keep muscles and bones strong in weightless conditions.

"It is concentration all day, every day," Wilmore said. "There is so much at stake here. Science projects. Experiments that people have worked on for years. To be in charge of that, to have that in your hands, it's a lot of concentration."